THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA. OIL ON CANVAS. Probably 18TH CENTURY, AFTER VERONESE.

Kidnapping of Europe. Oil on canvas. Probably 18th century following the model of VERONESE, Paolo Caliari (Verona, 1528-Venice, 1588). Oil on canvas showing a scene from classical mythology located in a natural landscape with leafy trees and a fragment of pyramid-shaped ruins in the background. Note (by the clothing) that the female figure on a white bull in the group on the left is the same one that appears moving away from the animal on the right and, again, in the water, at the bottom of the composition. Europa was a Phoenician princess who was kidnapped by Zeus: the god was transformed into a white bull and mixed with the cattle that the girl's father had. She saw him while he was picking flowers with his retinue of ladies and seeing the bull, he approached the animal. After verifying that he was tame, he ended up on its back, at which time Zeus took the opportunity to take her on his back to Crete, getting into the sea. Paolo Caliari or Cagliari, better known as Paolo Veronés or Veronese, was a very important painter of Venetian Mannerism. He dealt with the same theme with a very similar composition on a canvas painted in 1573 and kept in the Antecolegio of the Doge's Palace in Venice, and on another canvas dated between 1580 and 1585 found in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. This work is clearly based on the second painting mentioned, as it was a frequent source of inspiration for numerous painters and, particularly, for the Spanish scholarship holders in Rome (the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid preserves another Kidnapping of Europa inspired by the same work by Veronese, but this one carried out by Alejandro de la Cruz, a student of Mengs who was pensioned in 1765 by the Academy in Rome).

· Size: 191x7x158 cms. 167x134 cms.